$560.0K on the table at Lokomotiva Zagreb. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Stanislav Sytnyk will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Solin the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Solin this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Petar Mišković is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Everybody at Solin saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 35 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Petar Šimunić is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Solin, and it is not being withdrawn.
Argus Vanden Driessche was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Josip Čikvar trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Josip Čikvar signs something — a contract at Solin or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A manager forgives a bad Saturday far more readily than a bad Tuesday, because one of them he can explain and the other one he chose. The reports this week have not been good.
Robert Ćosić was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Solin will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Solin is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Robert Ćosić was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Petar Šimunić falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Every club pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time it has been tried.
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 50 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Solin have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
A mark of 8.05 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Solin close the window on a squad of their own making
2 in and 0 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Robert Ćosić and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
In brief
SquadDuje Ušalj falls out with a teammate over standards
The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Pierre Mounguengue did not need any: 7.67, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Argus Vanden Driessche and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Everybody at Solin saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 35 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Antonio Azinović is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Minute 93, against Trnje, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Solin told Argus Vanden Driessche something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Tin Šarkanj
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Solin they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Robert Ćosić and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Antonio Azinović is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Solin told Noa Mikić something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
22 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Radnik Krizevci next, and one man in the Solin dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Petar Šimunić is living that version at Solin, and it tends to show in the first month.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Antonio Azinović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Solin know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Solin will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Solin, another week without a signature from Antonio Azinović.
Successful dribbles: 15. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Lokomotiva Zagreb have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
In brief
Transfer targetsA loan move for Luka Bilandžić is in the works